


Unconscious of the Scarlet Freight

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Episode 2x03, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Season/Series 02, talking past each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-22 16:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22219177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: If Emma had ever been more infuriated, more humiliated by her mother’s words, she couldn’t remember. Or, Emma and Mrs. Green don't understand each other at all, following 2x03.
Relationships: Emma Green & Jane Green
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Unconscious of the Scarlet Freight

The clock struck twelve in the hall, and Emma Green made no move to heed it. Slouched against her bedroom window, she was in that state she’d found herself in too frequently, of late: shaken and exhausted, her mind restlessly pacing in the same old places it had stepped before, long after she’d had any energy to physically follow it.

After the terrible row at Corporal Bryant’s deathbed, Mrs. Green had swept out of the hospital in a whirl of indignation and watered silk ribbons, and Emma had wanted to chase her. Emma _should_ have chased her – she was her mother, it was her filial duty – but someone had to help bring the Corporal’s remains to the dead room, and sit with Mrs. Everett, and write out the notice of death, and, when all of that was done, strip down the bloodied linens and make the bed anew. Someone else could have done it. Emma told herself they were short-handed, and where that excuse fell flat, she told herself this, too, was her duty. Bryant had been her charge, hadn’t he? He’d been beyond her power to help, and as Revered Burwell read his inflammatory eulogy – as Mama accused her before Chaplain Hopkins and the whole ward of having lost her way, of _falling from her family_ – she let go of any pain she’d felt at her countryman’s passing. 

If Emma had ever been more infuriated, more humiliated by her mother’s words, she couldn’t remember. So she’d held fast to her hospital tasks, performing them slowly and deliberately, until she could hold up no longer, and she’d made her sullen way home.

She rested her forehead against the cool glass panes, exhaling slowly as the rags of a breeze carried the garden’s scents up through the window. There were the roses, first and foremost, her mother’s most prized possession. Others came up to her: begonias and zinnias, dreamy magnolia and the fading syrup-sweet smell of honeysuckle. The cool moonlight showed some, obscured others in shadows cast by the gently-rustling oaks.

One was not moving like the others, she noticed slowly, before snapping upright. It was _Mama_ – the light winking off her brooch, the unbending posture so familiar – walking through the garden, her wide skirts brushing the flowers as she passed. Emma backed away, as though caught somewhere she shouldn’t be, hoping her mother hadn’t seen her. She felt powerfully guilty – however out of humor Emma was, it was so late, and Mama looked so lonely in the garden. Sighing, she grabbed a shawl from her dressing table, and went back downstairs.

“Emma,” Mrs. Green said, coolly, looking up as Emma closed the door behind her “I cannot imagine what you’re doing out here.”

“A daughter joining her mother in the garden of an evening is hardly a crime.” She’d tried for lightness, her old belle’s insincerity, her daughter’s familiarity.

“And for how much longer, if your friends at the hospital have their way?”

Was she thinking of a curfew? Occupied Alexandria was a different case than occupied New Orleans – no one had attacked a Yankee officer in the street! – thought Emma, and it was ridiculous to compare the two. She wouldn’t dignify that with a response, only neutrally saying that her friends were nurses, civilians, and doctors, who were far too preoccupied with typhoid (and one typhoid case in particular) to care. 

Her mother wasn’t mollified. “And the Army they serve? Have you forgotten, Emma, what they did to your home? Your father? Your sister –“ she stumbled, waved off Emma’s hand “ – Your sister’s beau?”

“I didn’t come out here to argue, Mama,” Emma said wearily, putting her shawl around her mother’s shoulders, thinking she hadn’t come out here to apologize, either. “It’s late. Please come in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title, according to venerable tradition, from Emily Dickinson 404/ "How many Flowers fail in Wood".
> 
> From a prompt from a mysterious friend on tumblr: _Emma and Mrs. Green for "a daughter joining her mother for an evening stroll is hardly a crime."_
> 
> Emma thinks that her mother is referring to the Union's strict governance over New Orleans following its capture in April/May of 1862 (perhaps, specifically, Benjamin Butler's General Order no. 28) when she's referring to the Union's bad conduct, but, as she'll find out later, that's not precisely the case.


End file.
